User blog:Eveaustria/Part 1 Overview about an History of HKO (and the HKO-Wikia) in English
This blog-post is going to chronologically sum up the blog-entries so far; BUT: *1. building it all on a foundation of important turning-points of the game HKO to (hopefully) make things more interesting, *2. excluding all the un-fun details and quotes of boring conversations from the HKO-Wikia from all the other entries, *3. adding my own history with HKO and my reasons for doing this or that for a better understanding This user-blog has almost exclusively covered the "history" of the HKO-Wikia up until now. ' Originally this blog was supposed to be some sort of logbook about what has happened and was going to happen in the HKO-Wikia - in hopes of interesting developments to come. However life plays by it's own rules and things turned out way differently from what I could have imagined back then. For example no seriously interested contributor showed up to share the fun as I had always hoped. Au contraire: the HKO-Wikia even lacked any kind of visitors since the beginning of my activities in here; pretty much nobody ever seemed to drop by to take a look. On top of that the game HKO itself went downhill faster and faster instead of receiving some long-awaited upgrades to flourish anew. The community shrunk away severely, most newbies didn't stay for long anymore. In consequence I slowly reduced all my earlier big plans for the HKO-Wikia and such wasn't able to post any mentionable changes nor success messages in the blog like I had hoped for earlier. Sadly nothing really noteworthy positive happened in or to the HKO-Wikia during that time as well. When a certain HKO-player tried to freeze, take over and later to change the HKO-Wikia on a large scale many entries to the blog centered around these events since they greatly concerned the HKO-Wikia. Just as a reminder for myself I also recorded the English conversation we conducted, translated to German in the blog. This actually is still useful to me now - though of course not to anyone else. So the blog up until now contains mostly rather "private" content about my struggles with the HKO-Wikia instead of offering interesting information or a fun read for everybody who might stumble in here by chance. However who would be interested in a boring user-blog to a insignificant and mostly forgotten Wikia about a small online-game for children and kidults ( http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/kidult ) like Hello Kitty Online anyway? Well, that's what I thought. Surprisingly at least one anonym reader actually might? Hm. At least I was asked politely by a guest to "write in English" recently… '''So I gave it some more thoughts: ' * it IS possible that someone might find one's way in here by "Googling" specific terms, and then might wonder what this blog is all about, since he/she cannot understand a word. I should consider that * however since this German blog contains heaps of translated stuff that had been written in English in the HKO-Wikia, it totally wouldn't make any sense to translate it all "back" now * this blog has somehow turned into a personal record of experiences I made with the HKO-Wikia, and much too many of them with one specific person. So it is just not interesting in general as of now * the blog also is much too longwinded to be a worthwhile read, with detailled descriptions of rather boring events, lots of quotes and the like about maybe insignificant occurrences * what has happened to the HKO-Wikia might not really add up to anyone without any information about what has been going on at and around the game HKO at the same time, embedded into its past and its expected future perspectives Which means that I will sum up the blog-entries in English for those who might (whysoever) be interested, but add some stuff I always wanted to put down somewhere - mostly about all the changes and events of HKO. '''Okay, so let's start this: '- November 5th 2004': Sanrio revealed plans to create a Hello Kitty Online MMO. They wanted to present sceneries like "Kitty Kingdom", "XO Federation", "Melody-Land", "Puroland" and "Badtzcity". It was said that the game would be based on questing and killing monsters like any other MMORPG from that time (like EQ, AC or DaoC), with different careers to chose from for characters, with shops to open (!), an ingame-bank and so on. http://www.diggersrealm.com/mt/archives/000356.html The picture to this article shows a very varied colourful player-room - while the current version of HKO does not allow you to paint walls and floor of your room other than pinkish respectively grey. '- September 7th 2007': a Hello Kitty Online trailer showed up at YouTube (and is still there): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vuCRuNLoEM In this trailer you can see a totally different character-creation-screen and user interface from the current ones, also different places to visit on SanrioLand than as of today, a completely different 2D-farm-style, wandering NPCs, and more interesting customization-options for your player-room than in the present Hello Kitty Online. It was already clear back then that HKO would be "free-to-play" and funded by a Cash Shop. '- February 13th 2008': Closed-Beta-applications for the international version of Hello Kitty Online were accepted. More than 30.000 players applied within the first 2 days. When over 40.000 users had applied the application-acception was stopped on February 21st 2008. In these days the game HKO already had a similar look to that of today, but it was a rather typical Asian old-school-like RPG with unoriginal genre-typical "quests" à la "fetch me 3 pelts from wolves" and the like. Animals also dropped stuff like clothes or wigs/hair-styles for player-characters. Growing plants on your farm / user-garden was interesting and rather complicated, also pests like flies would invade your farm; pesticides were available as well (and buggy). Hello Kitty Online was already connected to Sanriotown.com back then that offered free user-blogs, emails, slideshow-making, minigames, forums and more to every HKO-player. Sanrio characters (NPCs) in HKO were said to have animated facial expressions. Player houses had to be maintained or would otherwise "depreciate" like get infested with pests. Character-outfits, user-houses and their interiors were very varied. '- April 23th 2008': the official Closed Beta for international HKO started at 00:00 Hong Kong Time. '- March 31st 2008': the HKO-Wikia was founded by the user Hellomimi. Either she never contributed even one single article to her project, or she changed her user-name afterwards, or maybe all of her contributions were deleted without leaving a trace later on. The game Hello Kitty Online was still in it's "Closed Beta"-phase at that time. It was hard to find any useful information about it on the net at all, even the official website did not go into details too much. '- May 1st 2008 to June 30th 2008': an official trailer contest was held. The SanrioTown-webpage to this http://www.sanriotown.com/hko_trailer_contest/hko_trailercontest_us.htm hinted at a release of HKO "later this year" (2008). You can find trailer-entries for this contest on the "Dream Studio" pages of Sanrio Town http://forum.sanriotown.com/index.php , and at least one fan-trailer on YouTube from that time (the one I found doesn't reveal much of the gameplay and ingame-sceneries though). '- May 22nd 2008 - May 25th 2008': an event for Closed-Beta-testers (either called "Monster Hunter & Farm Expert" or "Calling All Hunters and Farmers") was organized - all players who managed to collect pet-cards from all monsters execpt the dinosaur would get a dinosaur-pet-card and a ticket. For the second entry five types of seeds had to be planted on the ingame-farm, you'd get another ticket for that. 15 lucky ones of those who submitted a ticket were selected by drawing of lots and would also get some ingame-items, cash shop points (for use later on in Open Beta) and Hello Kitty merchandise products. The drop-rate of pet cards was revealed to be 1/100. One Grand Prize winner would be drawn as well. '- May 29th 2008': a preview on IGN.com mentioned that the "monsters" in HKO would not be virtually "killed" by fighting them with blunt weapons like brooms, but were merely made "dizzy" by that, just like it is currently - only that back then they still dropped body-parts... Cards were - rarely - dropped by monsters to make them your pets - only that in the Beta pets were merely "eye candy" and not useful. It was expected that pets would later on help you in battle. Boss monsters that would require cooperation to be defeated had been announced for later on. Quests were mostly about gathering stuff, but characters had "different" skill sets. Well, I wonder if that "skill-system" wasn't completely misunderstood by the reviewers as it happened after release ever so often as well. Guild members could still help out with building your house. The Open Beta was said to start "soon"(™)… '- May 29th 2008 - June 1st 2008': the event "Lucky Seven" required players to get together in groups of 7 while having 7 specific pets with you and make a screenshot. Sending this to Sanrio Digital could earn you some ingame-items. '- June 1st 2008': the (prolonged) HKO Closed Beta ended on that day '- June 12th 2008': MMORPG.com stated that in Asia HKO was targeted towards office ladies aged 20-30, but in the US much younger players were expected to join the game. Quests had "voice-overs" back then at least for the first dialog-part with any NPC. There was a "hunger"-bar for characters. Pets could be grown (aka: raised in level) now, would fight with you and their stats "assisted" with other pet-cards (whatever that meant). Mobs dropped recipes for tradeskills (sewing, cooking, etc.), additional to recipes for quest-rewards and those you could buy from vendors. Dye-pots could be bought to paint parts of your house and of course to dye your character-outfit. Too bad you cannot dye your stuff in HKO anymore; but you had to do an awful lot of grinding for getting those dye-pots anyway if the review is to be trusted. '- August 29th 2008': the first "official" Hello Kitty Online Trailer was made: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdkGv2uk2xo This official trailer "introduces" 8 cities of Sanrio Land, as players were able to visit Moscow and Tokyo as maps in Beta-times. These cities were dropped before release and are still not accessible ingame at present as of August 2012. New York was dropped as well and only added to the game much later again on January 24th 2011. In 2008 there were larger city overview-city-maps than today, completely different minigames, different locations of NPCs, different player-character-outfits and different looking plants for your farm too. '- August 30th 2008': a preview of IGN.com "revealed" about Hello Kitty Online: "in the fantasy world consists of three imaginary kingdoms, player can utilize his/her personal skills and culture, to develop the countries and to accomplish the various missions. … Players can choose from 15 occupations (including teacher, trader, doctor and actor) -- and through different missions and jobs, these characters will continue to raise the capacity of a kingdom, shape its development, and change its fate.". As we know these concepts never made it into the game HKO for real. '- October 8th, 2008': the public "Founders Beta"-Phase of the game HKO began, which had already been announced on September 12th. Sanrio Digital also mentioned that only a limited number of users were allowed to play. The new version of HKO for this phase included a different interface, the "opening" of the cities London and Paris, new maps, monsters and items, pets, and a different skill-system. '- October 16th, 2008': Sanrio Digital implemented quests to collect materials to build the ingame-city New York that was announce for "the next phase of the game" (in reality it only showed up for events on Christmas 2008 & Christmas 2010, but was permanently implemented as late as of January 2011). The names of all successful participants of the building-event "Build New York!" were said to be recorded and "made immortal" by being mentioned on plaques in the new ingame-area. '- October 17th 2008': the event "Hunger Strike" for the Founders Beta was held - the crocodile Pochi in Sanrio Harbour would ask players for a lot of dishes you could cook ingame after growing plants as ingredients. You would then get an "Empire key" and had to send a screenshot of your character with the empire key to Sanrio Digital via email. If you did that, your character was to be mentioned on said plaques in the new city New York that had been announced. '- October 18th, 2008:' and yet another Hello Kitty Online trailer from Beta-times was uploaded on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KovnA9RUt3k This trailer shows a colorful flowery login-screen, Sanrio characters as merchants (before that they had been human), the option to dig in the sand of Sanrio Harbour, as well as city-maps of Moscow & Tokyo among other things. '- October 19th 2008:' the user Azog-hko stopped contributing to the HKO-Wikia after making 141 changes. '- October 22th 2008 - November 3rd 2008': a creative outgame-event called "Frightspinners" was held; players were asked to make a "video" (in reality more of a slideshow) with a "frightening story" by using ingame-screenshots of HKO. What a mind-boggling task to create a horror-story by only being able to use cute and very pink pictures :D '- October 24th 2008 - October 26th 2008': an GM-lead event "Be Nice, Guys" was held on Sanrio Land - you had to bring a GM different HKO-newbie-items - to get Leopard Glasses. '- October 30th 2008': the event "Monster Wrangler" started as another part of the "build New York" - events. Keroleen in Paris would send you on a quest to fetch her 4 pets (special tough monsters) to be found on Sanrio Land. For this you would get the "Liberty key" and again had to send a screenshot of it on your character to Sanrio Digital to be mentioned on plaques in New York later on. '- November 1st 2008:' another birthday of Hello Kitty to be celebrated by a small event in HKO - Choco in Florapolis would give you a Grand Central Ticket, a screenshot was to be sent to Sanrio Digital and a party was held in the "Party Room" where players were asked to wear birthday shirts. Once again your character was said to be mentioned on plaques in New York for this. The user Dagashi stopped contributing to the HKO-Wikia after making 146 changes. - November 1st - November 6th 2008: 'the event "'Food for Friends" took place in Sanrio Land. Players cooked and submitted 344.965 ingame-dishes and made Sanrio Digital donate $ US$ 12,273 to UNICEF and the Asian Youth Orchestra. The Founders Beta was said to end on November 8th. '- November 3rd 2008': for the guild event "Build New York" one representative of each participating guild was to set out to meet a GM and exchange a "Liberty key", an "Empire key" and a "Grand Central ticket" for a Statue of Liberty House Certificate, a Empire State House Certificate and a Grand Central House Certificate to be built on a farm (and collect all the required materials). A screenshot of all three buildings was then to be sent to Sanrio Digital. Only two guilds would be selected as winners. '- November 5th 2008:' the event "GM Piñata" allowed you to "whack" *cough* GMs that teleported around all over Sanrio Land with trading-invitations - and receive ingame-items from them. The event "Build New York: Mystery Items!" made players collect a lot of materials plus a "Liberty key", an "Empire key" and a "Grand Central ticket" and adding to that a poem about Guild Build (with 5 lines minimum and a-b-a-b-a rhyming scheme), to be exchanged for a New York house certificate. '- November 7th - November 8th 2008:' the last two days of the Founders Beta were full of small creative events ("designs" made by planting crops for "Crop Circles", cosplaying as your HKO-character for "Body Doubles", blog about the Founders' Beta for "Blog for Thought", fanart for "A Day With Hello Kitty and Friends"), and a GM-lead "Kevent" (= key-event) on November 8th at 10 PM on the final day of the Founders Beta. These two days were allover called the "Founders' Finale". '- November 18th 2008 - November 24th 2008': the game HKO was still closed for players, but a small outgame-event was held: players were asked to vote for one of the 10 finalists of "Frightspinners" to determine the top 3 winners. '- December 17th - December 22th 2008:' HKO was opened again for the event "Founders’ Christmas Reunion". It was to be celebrated in the ingame-city New York with special quests to "save Christmas", for special Christmas-themed items. The latest patches had implemented the Item Mall (the Cash Shop) to HKO and speech-bubbles for pets among other small updates. '- December 24th 2008:' the user Kawaii_ffxi stopped contributing to the HKO-Wikia after an impressive number of 675 changes to this Wikia - still all about the Beta of HKO. Next parts of this blog-entry will be about the following years :) Category:Blog posts